How to weigh academic rigor with teens stress

Applying to College
101

the first scan is on test scores and gpa, really low ones that go in the reject pile. Chicago’s 25-75 range for ACT is 31-34 so a 27 isn’t going to get rejected right away, but for sure anything below 20 and 2.5 would.

What all these schools want including Chicago are 34/4.0 students with an intriguing story, possibly a hook. That would make the job easiest as possible. Best of both worlds, one minute to decide on the application. The best violin player in the state or best sculptor or artist with a 34 or 35 and flawless transcript. You might get one of those maybe two in your applicant pools. So the other spots are the ones that take up the time.

102

“The best violin player in the state or best sculptor or artist with a 34 or 35 and flawless transcript. You might get one of those maybe two in your applicant pools.”
For UChicago they get hundreds if not thousands in their applicant pool. I personally know two kids who are 36 and flawless transcripts and top five in the nation in their ECs. Both were rejected and one even did ED. That’s why such crap shoot process is giving kids so much stress these days.

103

But there aren’t very many of those. Chicago not only is highly selective, but it also has the reputation of being a very tough school academically - definitely not a party school – and there probably very few low end students who even apply. There may be students who are automatic rejects for other reasons – probably they get more hail mary apps from students with high test scores and sub-par GPA’s than the other way around. (Because kids and parents place greater importance on test scores than colleges do). But in any case, they still have admissions readers who need to very quickly weed through apps that don’t go into the auto reject pile.

Because its not the stats game that applicants and parents think it is. The question would be: what did those applicants offer to Chicago that others didn’t. Their past accomplishments, no matter how impressive, are valuable only to the extent that they fill a need for the college – if there are too many other student like them (similar EC’s, similar academic interests) – then the college may start looking at demographic factors (to fill diversity goals). It’s probably tough to apply to Chicago as a prospective econ major; I’d imagine they have a lot of those.

Or they may start looking at yield prediction. It doesn’t help them to accept a bunch of Harvard wannabes who actually end up being accepted to Harvard… so sometimes there is a downside to having an application that is too flawless. (

When my D. was accepted to Chicago, there were a lot of kids rejected or waitlisted who had much higher scores. I felt sorry for one parent in particular on CC, as her son had very strong stats and had his heart set on Chicago, but had been waitlisted… and I knew as soon by then that my D. would be turning down her spot. (I did encourage DD to be prompt in notifying Chicago). Many of the kids who had been admitted posted their Chicago essays on CC. My daughter posted hers. It was not like any of the others.

104

I think most top schools take essays seriously, but I do think Chicago REALLY uses the essays in the decision process, just based on what I have heard. With that said, I am surprised that a school like U Chicago that seems hell bent on keeping their stats at a certain level (low acceptance rate, high yield) would not accept an ED applicant with a 36, unless there was an issue with the GPA that showed underachieving? Very strange. How bad could their essay have been? A student with a perfect ACT score should be able to crank out a decent essay and you would think that if they were applying ED, they would make sure it was good.

105

^My understanding is that MOST essays are bad. Bad meaning boring, cookie-cutter, and/or not showing the students personal story/voice but instead reiterating how involved they are in their ECs or how well they do in school.

106

“… I am surprised that a school like U Chicago that seems hell bent on keeping their stats at a certain level (low acceptance rate, high yield) would not accept an ED applicant with a 36, unless there was an issue with the GPA that showed underachieving? Very strange…”

Actually, not strange at all. If you think a 36/4.0/national awards kid is one or two in the applicant pool of a school like UChicago your estimate is way off, not by a factor of ten, not even a factor of a hundred, it is off by a factor of a thousand! Just do the math: every year there are about 2300 kids who score ACT 36 and about 700 kids with 1600/2400 SAT. Those are just one sitting scores. And out of the 3000 perfect scorers a year my guess is that 2200 of them are Asian kids and 1500 of them are Asian boys. To make matters worse, in a few dozen of national contests where there are objective measures such as US Olympiads in math, phys, chem, bio, CS etc, about 70% of top 200 kids are Asian boys.
So, if a typical high achieving Asian boy applies to every top ten school, UChicago would see 1500 of them. But it can only take in about 150 of them, which means that nine of ten of those 36/4.0/national awards kids will be rejected by a school like UChicago.
The Asian boy I know with 36/4.0 and top five in his EC and even national TV appearance, and etc etc, was deferred ED and rejected by UChicago and every other ten top school this year. He ended up going to a state flagship school. If you have read CC long enough it should not come as a surprise because numbers don’t lie.
That’s what gives so many kids and their families, especially Asian American ones so much stress. Every year in areas where there are high achieving Asian kids, the stress and depression lead to several suicides in high school, not because they are all Ivy worshipers, but because the sense of societal rejection and self worthlessness can be overwhelming.
Unfortunately, lot of those parents are helpless in alleviating such stress as lots of them are ill-equipped in language and culture to make the kids see the larger picture.

107

I see that in the bay area as well (unless you’re also commenting on bay area). Asian male is the biggest over represented minority in colleges and the de facto admissions rates for them for places like HYPS are 2-3%. So I tell them if they have grad schools in their plans, they don’t have hooks (except b-school) and grad school is more important than undergrad in this country when it comes to correlation with success. Also adcoms make mistakes, a lot of them, they’re human and students shouldn’t think they’re some sort of infallible group. I told an Asain male that got wait listed, that the college made a mistake, plain and simple.

My advice going forward is for them to apply less to the colleges that prefer minorities or practice AA (not saying those are bad inherently) and apply to MIT, Cal Tech, Berkeley where admissions does not have a soft quota on Asians.

108

I don’t think the ethnicity is a factor-- but certainly essays & LOR’s might be. Perhaps along with the great test scores and terrific grades there may be other issues that teachers find concerning. (Some that come to mind, not necessarily for this particular example, could be, a student who is perceived as being focused on grades but otherwise incurious; a student who is perceived as self-aggrandizing and arrogant; a student who is believed to be a cheater; a disciplinary issue that was handled quietly at the school but needs do be disclosed to the colleges; or some personality problem completely unrelated to the academic stats). Many LOR’s damn with faint praise, and in some cases teachers or g.c.'s may be more direct in letting colleges know of a potential problem. A student who has top grades and test scores who gets rejected from every top 10 school he applies to has some other issue. (Heck, who knows, may just be that a kid is lying to his friends about his grades and test scores – or maybe the kid plagiarizes his college essays)

And yes, the essay itself could be a factor, if it is offputting in some way. I don’t think that the vast majority of essays make a difference, except at the extremes – the ones that are unusually strong or compelling can tip the balance toward admission — and the ones that are extremely poorly written, or offensive in some way, or raise red flags – can definitely lead to rejection.

109

@calmom if your DD got into UChicago with a 27 ACT due to a beautiful essay Congrats! But mathematically, there is just no way to fit 1500 kids into 150 slots. The sooner people understand that the less stress they shall have.

110

Even people that don’t think ethnicity is a big factor or decisive in an application know it’s a factor.

111

As to my comment above about their being something wrong or off about an application - if a kid with “36/4.0 and top five in his EC and even national TV appearance” is rejected from one top school, that’s meaningless. That’s just the way things work. But if that same kid applies to a whole set of top schools and gets rejected from all… then something is off. I don’t know the kid and I don’t know the circumstances, but it’s not about being Asian. I have seen plenty of bay area Asian kids with great but less impressive stats get into multiple Ivies as well as Chicago. There are many reasons why that particular kid may have somehow failed to impress any of the ad coms of the multiple schools he applied to… but his ethnicity wasn’t the reason. Obviously it wasn’t a positive hook

As to my daughter, I didn’t say that the essay got her in – but the essay probably drew attention to her application. It wasn’t better than others – it was simply charming and unpretentious in a field where most applicants were trying very hard to impress).

It’s was the kind of thing that would have been noticed, and possibly shared with other admissions readers, because it was amusing.

It also could have resulted in some laughs and a rejection. Or worse, given that not everyone would appreciate my daughter’s humor. But it didn’t. It was an EA application that resulted in deferral. D. submitted supplemental information after the deferral, which at least would reassured the ad com that she was capable of being serious.

I’ve already posted that I think it was her potential value to an under-enrolled academic department that would have been the reason for admission. Again: the admissions people aren’t in the business of judging a competition – their job is admit a varied set of individuals that will fill an array of institutional needs, including the need to improve enrollment in some majors, winnow out excess enrollment in others, meet a variety of diversity goals, and to make sure that important elements of student life are maintained. Despite Chicago’s reputation as a bastion for intellectuals and the place where fun comes to die, the school does have a Div III athletic program, and teams that need player. They do have a music department and a symphony orchestra that needs skilled musicians. That’s the key – what does student X bring to the college that fills a need? (And if the student doesn’t know the answer to that question before applying, then that student is already at a competitive disadvantage against those who do).

112

@calmom Obviously, the adcom did everything right in your DD case and system worked for you.

But for many people numbers are just fact of life. Even if 1500 kids with perfect essays and perfect everything else they cannot squeeze into 150 slots. In practice adcoms probably don’t distinguish 35s vs 36s or 1600 vs 1560, which means the number is more like 15000 for 150. That just means that acceptance/rejection is more due to luck than lack of perfection for these 36/4.0 awards kids. I don’t want to get into specifics about kids I know, but CC has plenty:

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-admissions/1876770-what-did-i-do-wrong-p1.html

Can you honestly say this kid has major flaws, like poor writing ability, personality issues and etc? He, just like thousands of others tried to squeeze in those limited slots and got unlucky.
To OP’s question I think a lot of hookless kids and their parents are stressed out because they believe there are always more things they can do, like better EC, essays or more difficult courses. But in reality its a number’s game. Even if you are perfect you can still be very unlucky. And its simply not these kids fault.

113

Being stressed out during senior year is inevitable, but as a parent you need to know the limits of that stress.
Health and well-being is the top priority. My daughter attended an impressive and extremely competitive school, but my recommendation for her was to take all the AP’s she could handle during junior year (she took 6: AP CalcBC, AP Chem, AP Eng Lit, AP Eng Lang, AP Micro Econ, AP Macro Econ)), and leave the post AP’s (seminars: English, Econ, and Multivariable Calc) for senior year (post AP’s are more complex, but required less work) plus AP Bio and AP Spanish Lit.
She started writing her essays during the summer before senior year. That helped a lot!
She had a very busy, but reasonable, first semester. She was nervous and had a lot to deal with, but it was manageable.

114

It’s a lot more random and a crap shoot than people think, especially when you don’t have a hook.

115

@calmom

Looking through your past threads, I noticed you have a daughter from Barnard class of 2010. Is this the one who got accepted into U Chicago with a 27 ACT? The acceptance rate in 2006 when she would have applied to U Chicago was 38.5% compared to the acceptance rate in 2017 of 8%.

116

Actually, it was more like 35%, but my daughter’s test scores were still in the bottom quartile & she still didn’t have any math beyond 2nd year algebra, and there were still a bunch of disappointed CC’ers with much higher test scores were turned down. The biggest change that I can see is that the department that represented the “need” my daughter could fill was downsized in the wake of the 2009 recession and doesn’t seem to have recovered… so in today’s admission climate, my daughter wouldn’t really have any value-added qualities that would be helpful there. (

And as admissions becomes more selective, the point just becomes stronger: applicants need to distinguish themselves even more. My D was never going to slide by into a school like Chicago based on her GPA and test scores, but in her day… many more of the high stat, AP-loaded students did. But those days are gone --now even the very high stat students need to come in with an application that paints a very clear picture of who they are, what they will bring from the school, and what sets them apart from the rest.

It’s not a random process. When admission rates drop below 10%, every single kid who get admitted has some quality (or multiple qualities) that has caught the eye of the ad coms and is the reason they chose that applicant over the thousands of others with similar stats who they rejected. Those extra qualities may or may not be related to academics. If you were to sit in a room with admissions staff and ask them, “why this student?” for every one they admitted, they’d be able to articulate a reason. n.

117

if you’re not hooked, it’s very random, there’s no substantive reason an adcom could give why one 1600/4.0 got in over another 1600/4.0. something in the essay clicked, the recommendation was good, those are random, by definition. A non-random process would be that a 1500 got in and a 1490 didn’t.

118

It may look “random” from the point of view of the applicant – but it is a subjective,holistic process and the ad coms know what their priorities are and they are making very deliberate, considered decisions. The problem with your statement is that the colleges do not use test scores as a sole determiner, or even a primary criteria. The test scores aren’t considered in isolation-- they are considered in context of other factors, like GPA & academic record – and that information is used as a first round screen.

It’s quite possible that my kid would have been an automatic reject if her GPA had been 3.2 – but it wasn’t. She had a high GPA that counterbalanced her test scores. It’s typical for schools to compute some sort of academic index, but they each have their own formulas. But the point is, they would never be looking at SAT scores in isolation.

119

^ To summarize, if you have personal interests and strengths, please show them senior year. If you don’t, follow the general route but odds aren’t better. The reader wants to have a clear sense of who you are and what you are about.
For a humanities student who can take 3 AP’s, calculus shouldn’t be one of the three, and if a class is cut because that student is exhausted and stressed out, it shouldn’t be drama or a humanities/social science class, because it’d make her profile more common and wouldn’t allow her to show her strengths clearly.

@swtaffy904 : have you come up with a good schedule?

1 Like
120

While I think being Asian was a factor in the boy that didn’t get in to U Chicago and all of the other top schools, I agree with @calmom that there must have been something else going on if he got in to no top schools. I suppose it is possible that he was just one of the unlucky ones that no one took, but I think there must have been something missing in his app. Might have been a blah essay, or like @calmom says, maybe we don’t really know some other information that may have hindered him. Sounds like he’s very bright, nonetheless, and is probably killing it at his state flagship and in the end, he may do even better having been the big fish…

@calmom, your daughter sounds like she not only positioned herself well with her choice of major and in finding the “need”, but she also was able to prove to admissions that she is much more than a test score. All of the top schools claim to look beyond test scores and to look at applications more holistically, and I think a lot of us question if that is really true. I’m glad to hear, in at least the case of your daughter, that is was. Sounds like her application was really strong and she was one of the ones that really stood out. Good for her.

As it relates to test scores in general, and maybe this is a topic for a new thread, but I often wonder how admissions would look if everyone took the standardized tests “cold”, or with minimal prep? I hired a great tutor for my daughter who is going to a top school and did get in to an Ivy…and she was able to get a 99th percentile score. But if she had NOT had the tutor, I’m sure she would have been much lower. I’m really stating the obvious here, I know, but I often remind her and other kids that think they might be more worthy of spots because of their scores, that the kids applying with lower scores may not have had access to the tutors that they had, or simply didn’t want to play the game and spend the money/time on tutors even if they could afford it. There are LOTs of kids with high GPAs, especially in a world where so many schools are no longer “ranking” kids, but less kids with incredible test scores. All things being equal, are the kids that had the tutors really any more qualified than their apples to apples peers (same gpa, same SES) for the top schools??? Probably not.

I’m curious, @calmom, did your daughter have a tutor or do any other kind of excessive preparation for her standardized tests?? A 27 is a very decent score for MOST colleges in this country, so she obviously is bright.

Taking it a step further, how many of the kids at U Chicago that had amazing scores would have gotten a 27 on the ACT if they hadn’t studied excessively or had a fancy tutor? I’m sure there are some that would have still scored above a 34, but overall, I bet many of them would have at least started with about a 27 if they didn’t go nuts with the preparation.

Again, I don’t mean to open a can of worms here and go off topic, but I thought this was a relevant point to make given the current conversation.

As it relates to the main topic of stress, preparing for the SAT was extremely stressful for my daughter and many of her friends. As her mother, while I was the one writing the check to the tutor, I often questioned my own judgement and questioned overall if it was really worth it. She was already jumping through hoops at her HS for all of her AP classes, her volunteering, her varsity sport, etc. Why should she have to do this at all??? Without her score, she probably would NOT have gotten in to the schools she got in to (unless she really stood out like @calmom’s daughter), but in the end would she really have been any worse off? Would she really have amounted to less because she went to a school like Boston College over a school like Dartmouth or Georgetown, where she absolutely needed her 99th percentile score to get in??? She would have been the same person either way. And while maybe the academics might be a bit “stronger” at the “harder” schools, would she not have achieved success at the second tier school?

In the end, we played the game and she is going to the “harder” school. But there are days I wonder if we had to go through all that we did…and if it was worth the STRESS.

Again, I’m off topic and this is a probably a topic for a different thread, but this has all been running through my mind while reading this thread so I thought I would share my thoughts.